Immigrant Occupational Attainment in Japan and Its Determinants; Is It a “Structured Settlement”?

Yu Korekawa, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Tokyo

Japan, as a “post-transitional society,” has recently shifted to a “new” country of immigration, similar to southern European countries. However, there are few studies on the integration of immigrants into the Japanese labor market. The present study aims to reveal immigrants’ occupational attainment in Japan, and its determinants, by comparing immigrants’ occupational distributions to those of their Japanese counterparts using micro-data from the Japanese census, conducted in 2010. Taken together, the relations between each determinant are similar to findings in previous studies in western developed countries. However, it is also revealed that Japan has simultaneously experienced multiple modes of incorporating immigrants; in other words, a “structured settlement” as a feature in a “new” country of immigration. This is a new, but an embryonic, concept in the present study.